#QUEER JOY

Ed Teach being a cutie 🥹

OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH

he wants to sing

he wants to share

he likes to tidy

he wants to be who he's never been given the chance to be

and he's gonna be one hell of an innkeeper

and he's gonna be one hell of a husband

no offence but the reason tumblr is “dying” is, well, yes, of course the cursed like/reblog ratio and the change in user behaviour (because of people being used to how instagram and tiktok work) BUT also the lack of weekly shows. i say it with my whole chest, they don't produce captivating and engaging stupid weekly tv shows anymore because streaming killed that so you have spikes of activity here when Something happens in general fandom or up to three days after a new season of whatever drops and then it's a wasteland. this is obviously an old woman yelling at a cloud missing supernatural and the vampire diaries and pretty little liars and all these other shows type of post but honestly give me back weekly tv shows where i have something to watch for 40 minutes almost every day of the week after work so then i can read and reblog it on tumblr give it back for the sake of my sanity

And I just got confirmation from a second ex-colleague that a deal with midjourney has been brewing since months ago. Not any extra details, just that's a real thing.

Shit, I don't see any way for this to happen that doesn't make it an apocalyptic event the size of the porn ban. Fuck.

Shit. This may be pure chance and coincidence, and it's not he is in a position to be able to talk about anything, but seeing prominent staff members announcing they are moving their original photography out of tumblr just two weeks ago seems a pretty significant cue of shit to be about to hit the fan.

Just tested. It’s possible to swap out pictures on already-published posts. So in that case, a solution:

Nightshade your photo posts now.

Even if you don’t post your own art anymore, go back to your old stuff and watermark it.

Do it ASAP, before the deal goes through and the scraping begins.

This will not only protect your art, but has the opportunity to fuck over this deal on a pretty large scale. The more of these posts that are glazed or poisoned, the less valuable this deal becomes for tumblr and midjourney.

Share this with everyone. And i do mean everyone.

Well fuck

"I've never been called the break in someone's day before"

One of my favourite things about S2 was that we got to see so much in terms of Ed's relationships with women, and it just made me love him even more (if that's humanly possible). We didn't see him interact with many women at all in S1 (I think it was only the posh ladies at the fancy party which was...yeah, not a good experience), so S2 actually giving us a glimpse into his friendships with all these (very different) kickass women was so, so special.

I love that, as messy and fucked up as they all are, and even with the 'well we're pirates, we're not normal and we will fuck with each other' threat that hangs over everything, Ed's relationship with Mary and Anne is still so affectionate, and they both thrown their arms around him the moment they see him. Even though Ed is incredibly tactile, I don't think we've actually ever seen him be hugged like this, and it's just so lovely to watch him be embraced and clearly feel very safe being embraced by these women (and I can't with the way he clings to them, as well). I also love that this is a wlw/mlm friendship; yeah it falls apart later and turns into delicious gay-on-gay violence (and I wouldn't alter a note of it), but I love seeing this sort of affection between queer women and queer men, there's not nearly enough of it.

Don't even get me started on the BFF handshake he has with Anne - I want all the history there, give me six spin-off films about their adventures please.

And then we finally get a glimpse of his relationship with Jackie, which is similarly just lovely, but in a different way? You get the sense that they could sit there for hours, talking shit about the world, all whilst casually ripping the shit out of each other (but affectionately). You also know full well these two have talked extensively about men and know pretty much everything about each other's sex lives - we didn't see it, but I'm absolutely certain that Ed went into full gushing details about sleeping with Stede, just like Jackie did when she talked about The Swede fucking like a jackhammer (historical accuracy ftw).

And, again, whilst they're still pirates, and it's messy, the entire thing feels incredibly...safe, particularly from Ed's perspective? He feels more comfortable around Jackie than he is around most other characters (apart from Stede), just like he was with Anne and Mary.

And then, just to hammer the point home even further that Ed has, generally, fantastic relationships with women, and connects with them, and feels relaxed and safe with them, you have Ed and Zheng becoming instant BFFs literally minutes after meeting each other. Ed goes 'ooh, very cool woman kicking ass and killing people, she shall be my best friend, immediately', and Zheng is automatically incredibly relaxed and open with him, too (suggesting she feels as safe and comfortable with him as he does with her).

All I want in life is to see Ed and Zheng get silly-drunk with each other (and this is why we urgently need a S3).

And none of Ed's relationships with these women are a fetishistic 'I love women because they're fabulous' thing, or an overly patronising paternalistic 'I love the women and I must protect them' thing - all the relationships he has with women are very equal, very comfortable, fully believable, just fantastic friendships to watch play out. I feel like, given everything we see on screen, Ed generally feels a lot more comfortable and safe and open with the women he knows than the men he knows (Stede is the only other person he is this physically affectionate and comfortable with). Which is probably very understandable? Yes, the women he's friends with are all violent pirates too (that's part of the joy of it - none of them are lovely demure morally pure women, they're all violent pirates), but Ed has a lot of experience with specifically overtly abusive men - right back to watching his dad abuse his mum. And that's a distinction that matters: the show treats the violence of normal piracy and the violence of abuse very, very differently. Ed is not used to being treated softly or affectionately by men, as we saw in his shocked reaction to Stede holding his hand. I don't think it's any wonder that he gravitates more towards friendships with women (or that the men he feels the most open and safe with, such as Stede, Fang, even Frenchie, are very pointedly the opposite of the abusive men he has experience with). I just love love love that being friends with women is such a core part of Ed's character, and that we got to see all of these fantastic relationships in the show.

oh boy

PSA: Nimona is free on YouTube, officially posted on Netflix's YouTube page. If you want to watch Nimona but don't have Netflix, this is your chance.

It's tumblr's birthday!!! Here's an extended version of Vico Ortiz's tumblr yearbook interview with @overchers about queer identity and swords (among other things).

reblog before voting!

there is something so normal about me when I watch the Geralt-Renfri sword fight

it was such a move to show Geralt absolutely lay waste to five armed men in under a minute only for his fight with Renfri to last like three minutes. Such a good way to demonstrate how absolutely lethal and skilled she was without the usual verbal exposition

AND THE COMBAT CHOREOGRAPHY

I’m chewing on concrete every time I rewatch it tbh

This is what makes me truly descend into madness! I’ve never watched an analysis, but to me it looks like he gives her

one:

two:

three:

four:

FIVE chances:

She stabs him several times throughout and he still stays his hand wherever possible, although he does land several blows.

Each time, he gives her a chance to disengage, but she advances again. the fifth and final time, he even lowers his blade completely. She advances again, and he kills her.

It is interesting to me that people debate whether Geralt was in the “right” here, because the intention of this story and its place as the first episode was very literally written to punish Geralt’s neutral stance. He adamantly refused to take a side and in the end is told he did choose, and he’ll “never know” if it was the right choice.

But it’s made clear that he does know. All of his actions in the story are determined by his regrets from that day. He should have chosen Renfri. Which is why he’s so determined to save the Striga Princess. Which is why Jaskier teases him for pretending to avoid conflict when in reality he always gets involved. He didn’t used to. Now he cannot walk away from anything. Renfri haunts his entire narrative.

I also love the line where Geralt says, “if we cross swords—“ and Renfri says, “I won’t be able to stop.” She could absolutely mean that she’s simply so determined that she refuses to give up until one of them is dead.

But immediately before that line, she tells Geralt magic doesnt work on her, whereas silver does, and Geralt actually balks because “silver is for monsters.”

We know Renfri has been mutated by some form of magic—whether completely by birth or even further by Stregabor’s experiments—and that she’s a ruthless combatant.

Although there is no actual proof of it in the show canon or the books, people have considered that Renfri literally cannot stop fighting once she starts—that her body is compelled and bound by her magic to see it through to the death.

Again, no “proof” of that, but it’s compelling! It would also mean that she doesn’t actually make her final choice the fifth time Geralt attempts to disengage. She would have made her final, fatal decision to fight to one of their deaths the minute the fight began, because she knew there would be no stopping.

And the scene really carried every ounce of that weight & the gravity of the consequences for Geralt.

That said, it is actually usually far more difficult to disarm and neutralize someone than to kill them. If you join a dojo, you usually won’t be placed with another beginner to spar right off the bat, because beginners are dangerous in that they don’t know how to hold blows. Two beginner combatants are more likely to hurt each other, whereas someone experienced will moreso “handle” you than actually fight you.

So that speaks to Geralt’s skill as a swordsman over Renfri, as well as—like you said—Renfri’s skill because it was so difficult for Geralt to “handle” her.

It’s the most poignant combat choreography I’ve seen in Western media in a decade. I’m Deeply

Deeply

obsessed with it.

this tag is making me laugh out loud because this is, in fact, Geralt’s worst job ever. he never gets it more wrong than this

that bts oh my goddddd

Source (Season 2 - January 4th 2024)

sambaschutte: Today’s Crew Shoutout: the legendary @lesdogggg - hilarious, powerful and stunning as Spanish Jackie🏴‍☠️ I baked cupcakes for Leslie and I think she loved them?☠️ At least she didn’t take m’nose⚔️

Doodle 5: Wee John and a perfectly delivered line